Cops Gone Wild Part 2: The Warrantless Wiretapping Throwback Edition

"Almost all witnesses who testified were members of the police force and had been involved in the wiretap operation. Corroborative testimony was presented that Stephen Ahern [another police officer] fathered the New Haven wiretapping operation from his apartment, beginning in the late fifties, with a machine that he himself had purchased. At that time, this activity, initially directed at gamblers, went on to include prostitutes and drug dealers, and then, in the late sixties, political activists and an assortment of students, professionals, and intellectuals. From 1964 on, Ahern had succeeded in acquiring more equipment (apparently with public funds illegally used for this purpose) and institutionalizing the tapping operation over the years by installing recorders in various locations at police headquarters.

The wiretap operation at police headquarters was at first conducted in a sergeant's closet, but was ultimately moved to a room specifically prepared with acoustical tile and closed to members of the force who were not privy to its operation. Loge were kept of phone calls tapped, detailing information considered essential for intelligence purposes. Inspector Nicholas Pastore testified that at the time in the late 1960s when Chief James Ahern [Stephen Ahern's brother] won national acclaim as a 'new breed' of liberal cop, he had, on more than one occasion, ordered the bugging of meetings of the police board through a wireless transmitter placed under the table in the police commissioners' conference room. Moreover, testimony revealed that the cell block phone in the police department used by individuals incarcerated there to contact their lawyers or arrange for bail was tapped.

Sergeant Walter P. Connor, assigned to monitoring the wiretapping equipment from April 1968 to the summer of 1969, testified that Chief James Ahern, who had visited the wiretap room after its removal from police headquarters, to the fourth floor of an office building in downtown New Haven in 1969, told him that if a stranger came to the door, 'throw the [expletive] machines out the window.'

Although the criminal and civil sanctions of the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968 put teeth into its strictures against wiretapping, the New Haven police wiretappers were obviously not deterred.